Cider with Rosie

[kev67]

A very famous book, but I wondered whether it had fallen out of popularity because I could not find it in the bookshops, until I looked in the biography section. It is actually part of a trilogy of sorts. The other books are called As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and A Moment of War, but Cider With Rosie is by far the most famous. Laurie Lee was born in 1914, the second youngest in a large family. His father's relationship with his mother must have broken down, because he packed them off to live in a village in the west of England and never seemed to visit them. The book is about life in that village during his childhood.

I wondered exactly what type of literature this was. It's not fiction because it is based on the author's memories of his childhood. It's not exactly autobiography because the stories are often about other characters from the village and even village tales that Lee had no direct experience of.They are not essays because the writing is too lyrical.

While reading it, I was reminded of a few other books I have read in the last few years. The description of the school and the mention of gypsies reminded me of A Clergyman's Daughter and Jane Eyre. The story of the blacksmith reminded me of Great Expectations. Laurie Lee's early sex life reminded me of Orwell's Coming Up For Air. The mention of babies that had died un-baptised reminded me of Tess and the d'Urbervilles, although otherwise, despite the rural setting, it did not because Tess was gloomy and Cider with Rosie is not. I was also reminded of the television series Heimat, about a German village during the first half of the 20th century, and even Downton Abbey sometimes.

Anyway, it's a good book and I recommend it.

[Prince Smiles]

Kev,
definitely read the other two books of the trilogy if they are findable. They detail Lee's experiences in Spain and the Spanish civil war. Both are well worth the read.
The back cover of my edition of 'A Moment of War' has Byron Rodgers of the Sunday Telegraph write, 'This book will tell you more about the Civil War than Hemingway or any history book.'

What did you think of 'Coming Up For Air'? I think it is Orwell's underrated masterpiece. It has been years since I read it, but the scene of the carp pool that has been filled in Lower Binfield springs to my mind whenever I see changes in the name of progress around me.

Greetings to you residing in Hardy's Aldbrickham.

[prendrelemick]

Neely recently started a review thread here.


http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?59290-Cider-With-Rosie-by-Laurie-Lee


I agree with your Heimat observation, that was a great series.

[kev67]

Prince Smiles,
I hope to get around to the other two books, especially A Moment of War, so I can compare it to For Whom the Bell Tolls and Homage to Catalonia. It is been a while since I read Coming Up For Air. It's not a very jolly book, but it was the book I was most reminded of while reading Cider With Rosie. Orwell's protagonist, George Bowling, lived his childhood in an English village before WW1 and both lament how their villages changed in the decades following that war. I was surprised Orwell's description of village life was corroborated so well by Lee's, because I don't think Orwell was describing his own background. Orwell was slightly posher and I gather he spent most of his childhood in prep schools and public schools. Coming Up For Air was published long before Cider With Rosie.

Brick-making used to be one of Reading's main industries, I think. I suspect that is why Hardy renamed the town Altbrickham. The phrase was, 'bricks, bulbs and biscuits', because Suttons's Seeds and Huntley and Palmers were based here too.

[Prince Smiles]

Prince Smiles,
I hope to get around to the other two books, especially A Moment of War, so I can compare it to For Whom the Bell Tolls and Homage to Catalonia. It is been a while since I read Coming Up For Air. It's not a very jolly book, but it was the book I was most reminded of while reading Cider With Rosie. Orwell's protagonist, George Bowling, lived his childhood in an English village before WW1 and both lament how their villages changed in the decades following that war. I was surprised Orwell's description of village life was corroborated so well by Lee's, because I don't think Orwell was describing his own background. Orwell was slightly posher and I gather he spent most of his childhood in prep schools and public schools. Coming Up For Air was published long before Cider With Rosie.

Brick-making used to be one of Reading's main industries, I think. I suspect that is why Hardy renamed the town Altbrickham. The phrase was, 'bricks, bulbs and biscuits', because Suttons's Seeds and Huntley and Palmers were based here too.

Nice post Kev.
You have me thinking about what changes there were in village life between the wars. Was it the loss of so many of the young men in the communities due to the casualties of WW1? Was it the loss of the green belt that surrounded the villages? The changing of trades, the loss of blacksmiths, for example? Were there any agrarian changes between the wars?

I do like the 'bricks, bulbs, biscuits' alliteration.:smile5:

[kev67]

Laurie Lee says the biggest change was the advent of the internal combustion engine. Before cars, motorbikes, buses and charabancs, horses were the fastest means of getting about. Lee says the maximum speed you could travel any distance by horse was 8 mph, so that limited the extent of your world. There seem to have been other changes too. The squire played an important role in the village, as did the church. Lee's family seemed to be lucky in that all the menfolk survived the war. It struck me that some of the tales were about women catching husbands, which made me wonder whether there was a shortage of young men after the war.

[Prince Smiles]

It struck me that some of the tales were about women catching husbands, which made me wonder whether there was a shortage of young men after the war.

Wiki says 886,939 soldiers were killed in WW1, and 1,663,435 wounded. God only knows how many of the wounded/returning soldiers were suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The population of G.B was 42,769,196 in 1921 to give a comparative figure.

Now if one reckons, and my knowledge of WW1 history is rather poor, mainly due to the fact that I find it very hard to read about the wanton loss of life and outdated military tactics; if one assumes most of the grunts storming the trenches were from working class backgrounds, then the impact of the casualties must have been hardest on that generation of village and small town populations.

Laurie Lee equates the car with changes in village life, and another mechanical invention, the machine gun helped cull the youth of the nations.
The commanding officers in Rhodesia in the Matabele War of 1893-1894, and The Second Boer War 1899-1902 saw first hand the devastation the Maxim gun was capable of, yet many of these officers who were still in military command posts during the Great War just allowed the carnage to continue. Shame on them! Eternal shame on them!

[kev67]

Wiki says 886,939 soldiers were killed in WW1, and 1,663,435 wounded. God only knows how many of the wounded/returning soldiers were suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.


Yes, 2.2 % of Britain's population was killed in WW1, but by my arithmetic that equates to about one in seven men of fighting age. That means about one in seven women who may have wanted to marry and have families could not do so. I think that's sad, although not every woman wants to marry of course. When Lee did not mention his father in the first two or three chapters, I wondered whether he had been killed. As it happened, Lee's father had survived, as had Lee's uncle on his father's side and all five uncles on his mother's side. That seems very fortunate. Strangely, Lee only mentions one family of which the father had died. He was the father of their friend Sixpence (iirc) and four other children whose names all started with 'S'. I thought the aftermath of the war would feature more in the book. I would be surprised if Slad village does not have a war memorial with at least a dozen names on it. The first or second chapter mentions a war deserter that Lee's mother was feeding. He was eventually caught and led away by the military police. I wonder what happened to him.

It is difficult to believe the British public would have accepted such high casualty figures. These days we think an attrition rate of 300 in ten years is a high figure. Maybe in part this was because people were more used to losing their children. Four out of Mr Lee's twelve children died in infancy. The size of Mr Lee's family surprised me, although I know British families did tend to be larger in those days. I was more surprised by the infant mortality rate. I had thought that by the early 20th century, the infant mortality rate had come right down. People were doubtless more religious in those days too, believing that death was not the end. Only clever clogs authors who wrote modern books were atheists.

[Prince Smiles]

On the subject of biscuits, towards the end of part one of Heart of Darkness, Marlow boards his steamer while waiting for his rivets to be brought up river from the coast and:

'I clambered on board. She rang under my feet like an empty Huntley & Palmer biscuit-tin kicked along a gutter; she was nothing so solid in make, and rather less pretty in shape, but I had expended enough hard work on her to make me love her.'

[LitNetIsGreat]

Yes Cider With Rosie and the other books, which I have read and enjoyed, are great novels and well worth reading. It was just the other day actually I thought about reading it again for the third time. I'm quite into the rural sort of life at the moment. I'm on the fourth book of the great James Herriot books, also similar in nature to Cider WR and likewise recommended.